Blackout in New Jersey, iPad to the rescue.

Just thought I'd share, the iPad is making itself useful once again. The power has been out here in my part of nj for the past few hours now. My laptop died a while ago and obviously my wireless router has no power either. So here I am posting this on my iPad in the dark, tethering the internet from my iPhone via mywi, thank god for 3G. This thing still has 76% of the battery left, so i should be good for a few hours.

but your iPhone's battery life which is broadcasting wifi through bluetooth doesn't last any longer. so you're going to be stucked with iPad with no internet

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That's what external battery packs are for. Mine will fully recharge the iPhone at least three times before the pack itself requires a recharge. With any luck, the iPhone/iPad pair plus that pack will outlast most outages.

Plus an iPad with no Internet still lets you read books, play games, watch movies, and listen to music you have loaded. Still not a bad deal at all!

That's what external battery packs are for. Mine will fully recharge the iPhone at least three times before the pack itself requires a recharge. With any luck, the iPhone/iPad pair plus that pack will outlast most outages.

Plus an iPad with no Internet still lets you read books, play games, watch movies, and listen to music you have loaded. Still not a bad deal at all!

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which battery pack do u have? i might get one.

the iPad's screen is so bright even in the lowest setting, i can't use it in the dark. damn, my eyes getting old.

the iPad's screen is so bright even in the lowest setting, i can't use it in the dark. damn, my eyes getting old.

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I bought the NewTrent IMP500 from Amazon a few weeks back, and I've been pleased with it for the iPhone 4. It's not much bigger than the phone, so it's really portable--great for tethering, but also for topping up the battery after heavy camera/video camera usage. It'll even power the iPad to about a 50% charge, though just like any non Apple USB charger, it'll throw the "not charging" message at you if you power the screen on--it'll just run directly off the IMP500's charge that way.

They have a larger capacity version out that will take the iPad up to an 80% charge as well.

For the brightness issue, I have a fairly dark wallpaper on both devices, use the white text on black settings in the Kindle app for reading, and there are a couple of alternative browsers out there in the App Store that will darken the screen quite a bit more than the brightness settings can. So those are possibilities that might make things easier for you.

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